Dir: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire | Cast: Tye Sheridan, Sean Penn, Mark Tyson | US Thriller 120′
Black Flies feels very much like a film you might have seen before: baby-faced paramedic rookie (Sheridan) comes up against the coalface of reality joining Sean Penn and his New York trauma team in Jean-Stephane Sauvaire”s blood-drenched docudrama of life on the streets. Meanwhile Mike Tyson is the bossman making sure they sticks to the rules.
Tye Sheridan makes it all watchable working alongside his antithesis – a less convincing Sean Penn – as a hardened medic whose integrity gradually bleeds out in the cliched finale (set to Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’), Sheridan becoming the knight in shining armour. We follow the two through their ‘casualty caseload’ of drug dealers, addicts and sex workers and we don’t care about any of them. But that’s the point. A decent thriller with a predictable outcome A pale rider alongside Martin Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead. @MeredithTaylor
IN UK CINEMAS FROM 19 APRIL 2024